November 7th, 2008

About the pictures...

Even if a little bit late, here are some images of my Frankfurt Book Fair 2008!

Lucien Leitess and Ilonka Reintjens looking for new titles to include in their catalogues during a casual open air meeting on Tuesday October 13th!

Lucien is one of my oldest friends in publishing and his publishing house Unionsverlag, based in Zürich, is just one of my favourites not only in German language but in the entire world! Thanks to him, Pontas could work for Turkish author Yasar Kemal…

And Ilonka, whom I finally met, has the chance to work with Eric Visser, owner of De Geus, another great publishing house but in the Netherlands, based in Breda. He is also one of my oldest friends in publishing. And I always like to explain that he was the very first publisher to listen to me and take me seriously when I explained I was starting an agency… that happened in June 1992 in a book fair in Amsterdam...

From left to right, a great team: Patrice Hoffman, Hélène Fiamma, Sophie Berlin and Teresa Cremisi from French publishing house Flammarion at the Fischer Verlag dinner on Tuesday October 13th. Only Olivia de Dieuleveult is missing in the picture (she was around there though).

Marc Parent, publisher at Buchet Chastel (France) and Sirish Rao and Gita Wolf, publishers at Tara (India) at the Berlin Verlag party on Tuesday October 13th. We were all celebrating the Booker Man Prize to Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger: Marc is his French publisher and he was so happy! By the way, it is thanks to Marc that Pontas represents the Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa!

Suzanne Brandreth has become a very important person for Pontas: since we are co-agents of Canadian The Cooke Agency for several territories (Spain, France, Portugal, Brazil and Greece), we are constantly in touch with her, emails and phone calls in and out between Barcelona and Toronto. We have sold several titles of their great list of authors lately and we are all happy with the deals! In the picture: on Wednesday 14th, catching up at her table number B 2 at the Agent´s Center of the fair, we had an entire hour, a luxury!

Glamourous Silvia Meucci, publisher at Siruela (Spain), going out for dinner at the Hotel Frankfurter Hof.

Believe me, Abel Gerschenfeld from Denoël (France) is a very serious publisher…

Eric Visser was happy to sign on the Dutch cover of Goncourt Prize Laurent Gaudé at a party organised by his French publishing house Actes Sud to celebrate so many translations already appeared of his novels (more than 20, probably 25!). For once, it was signatures time for publishers! And Marie-Catherine Vacher from Actes Sud, good mood and contagious energy as always.

Orhan Pamuk, Turkish author and Nobel Prize (left), giving an interview on the Blue Sofa of the fair. Looking at this image through the screen (it was so crowded that it was impossible to take a picture of the stage!) I only thought, with all the respects for Pamuk, that I wished Yasar Kemal had been there…

And Patrice Hoffmann and me. It is always nice to catch up with him, being the French publisher of three Pontas authors: Lluís-Anton Baulenas (last week Flammarion launched a fourth novel by him in France), Susana Fortes and Eric Frattini.